R³ Devotional - Day 190

Social Media is the world's report card nowadays.  Everything you see on people's personal pages is typically exactly how they want you to see them and how they live.  Everything is peachy.  Everything is relaxing, perfect, and prosperous.  This is how the world would have seen Israel at the time Isaiah opened chapter one in the book of Isaiah.  Isaiah jumps very quickly into his analysis of the current state of Isreal with an analogy where he is simply stating that livestock animals love, honor, and respect their owners more than the Children of Isreal do their maker, Jehovah.  He calls them out on their worship.  They are a lost people in God's eyes, despite what the prosperous city might otherwise say.  The worldview sees everything being so great.  Like it's looking at everything with Facebook eyes.  We very much get into that same painstacking path as Christians, where we are attending church, we are serving, and checking all the boxes, but our true worship is all a blur with Instagram Filters.  We think we are doing it right, as it sure looks good, but deep down our Savior, isn't believing it.  He isn't buying our fake post.  Heck, He is seeing all of our posts and easily sees where our daily worship is, and it isn't on Him.  Only He knows our worship.  Only He knows how much we desire that relationship with Him.  Isaiah scolds the Israelites in Ch. 1, v. 11 where he begins talking about how God sees their sacrifices.  He is judging their worship of Him based on their sacrifices and He sees right through it.  In fact, it is sickening to Him.  Detestable!! This is a direct hit towards us even today.  He can spot fake anywhere.  He knows when our worship is not about Him, but about our pride, our image, even a box to check on our weekly to-do list.  He sees right through all of those fake posts.  

Real life principles:
The world will construe our view of worship, and we can easily start worshiping how others live and how others see us.  The true heart of worship desires to make everything we do about Him.  How are we loving Him, how are we magnifying Him, how are we serving Him, how are we delighting Him, and how are we witnessing for Him?   
Relevant life applications. 

Let us devote ourselves to creating a life of Worship only to Him.  Let us learn how to eliminate things that may come about in our life that start gradually pulling our focus away from our true worship of Him, blurring the lines of hobby & idolatry.
Ready action steps

We need to be willing to admit when we need to return to the heart of worship.  Set pride aside, turn the world away, make hobbies wait, cut out idolatry, and be real.  It wouldn't hurt to turn down the social media daily screen time as well.